


The Name of the Game

by RichieTenenbaum



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 13:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15930962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichieTenenbaum/pseuds/RichieTenenbaum
Summary: It all starts up when the first flutters of snow hit the city and Pete walks into the office with a busted jaw and a sour look on his face. He is limping, slightly, and has a streak of grey mud along the back of his coat.





	The Name of the Game

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic and I have no idea what I'm doing. Please keep this in mind - I hope its not too terrible.

i.  
It all starts up when the first flutters of snow hit the city and Pete walks into the office with a busted jaw and a sour look on his face. He is limping, slightly, and has a streak of grey mud along the back of his coat.  
“Someone’s been fighting,” says Ken, and Pete glowers at him, unwilling to joke, wanting to be left alone.  
“I fell,” says Pete, and brushes past him.  
Ken follows Pete into his office, and stands in his doorway, smirking.  
“Tell me,” he says. “What happened?”  
“Nothing. I fell. There was sludge on the subway steps.”  
Ken raises his eyebrows, and Pete can tell that he doesn’t believe him.  
“Whatever,” says Ken. “I was looking for your secretary – we have an accounts meeting at two. I don’t think anyone told you about it.”  
“They didn’t.”  
“Well, it’s on.” Ken knocks twice on the doorframe, and then turns around, leaves Pete to his work.

The day goes by in a blur. Pete’s secretary is off, sick, and he doesn’t manage to get much done, just sits, staring at his papers. He contemplates picking up the roller deck from his secretary’s desk, and making a few calls himself, but feels too proud, somehow. He calls nobody and does nothing.  
He arrives late to the two o’clock meeting, makes some excuse that no one listens to. Roger smirks at Pete the whole way through. Pete can tell he is amused by Pete’s bruised jaw and struggles to gather the energy to even resent him for it. If their positions were reversed, Pete would be smirking too. He hates himself for getting into fights he can’t win, for being the sort of man who rubs people the wrong way, for his temper, his adultery, his vast, terrible loneliness. He fixates on this during the meeting and finds himself caught out – Roger asks him a question and he doesn’t reply, misses his points, stammers, and looks like an idiot. Ken stifles a laugh. Pete despises him.

After the meeting, when Pete goes to sit in his office and stare blankly at his wall, Ken comes by again and Pete knows he can’t have anything useful to say.  
Ken hesitates at Pete’s doorway – he seems to be contemplating walking away again, although Pete has clearly seen him.  
“What do you want?”  
Ken shrugs, stays still, hovering in the doorway. He always seems to be there, Pete thinks, not quite in the room, not quite out of it. He thinks about making a snide comment regarding Ken’s liminality but decides against it.  
“I don’t know.” Ken says. “I just – I was wondering what had gotten into you.”  
“So, you came up to my office to insult me? That’s rich, Cosgrove.”  
“That’s not what I’m doing.”  
Ken walks in, comes up to Pete’s desk, and stands, hovering over him.  
“Tell me,” says Ken. “I’ve put money on it.”  
“I got into a fight, if you really must know.”  
“Good. I made my money.”  
“I’m ecstatically happy for you.”  
“You look sore.” Ken says, and Pete wonders if this is a ploy, some attempt to confuse him, to make him look stupid for the sake of some old rivalry.  
“I’m fine. There’s no need for your pretence at concern.”  
Ken shrugs. He says nothing.  
“I need to get going,”   
“Ok,”  
“I mean it, Kenny.”  
“Sure.”  
Pete pours them both a drink.  
“A nightcap.” He says, as he hands Ken one.  
They drink in silence for a little while. Pete, relaxing into Ken’s company, returns to thinking about his jaw, which knaws at him. He rubs it absentmindedly, needling the bruise, hoping that it will be gone before too long. He hates to look unprofessional.  
He hears Ken breathing and shuffling beside him, but does not look over, just tries to take comfort in the silence and his whiskey.  
Pete is surprised, then, when Ken reaches for him, places his own cool fingers on Pete’s jaw. They both stand there, rubbing the bruise for a little bit. Their fingers overlap, and neither speaks, they just stare at each other, contemplating pain, and what might come after it. Then Pete comes to his senses, snaps out of it and pushes Ken’s hand away, walks out of the office, away from Ken and his unexpected gentleness.

 

ii.  
Later – much later – Ken finds himself with an eye missing, in a much worse state of dishevelment than any late-night drunkenness might have left him. He goes into work, before he is really recovered, wearing the eyepatch which he will use for the rest of his life. After the prerequisite exclamations of shock (“Dear God – what happened to you?”) and a fair amount of mockery, he finds himself in a bar, with Pete.  
Pete is laughing, of course, and pouting at him – offering false condolences and doing a truly awful job of disguising his glee a having gotten the Chevy account.  
“What a story!” says Pete, several times. “Really! You ought to write it up. It could be published.”   
“Mm.”  
“I mean it. It’s not all bad things, you know.”  
“Not for you.”  
“No!” says Pete “I didn’t mean it like that. You look brave – you’ll gain respect. People will think you’ve been a soldier. I mean – am I glad to have the Chevy account? Of course. But it’s not bad for you, either. You hated those animals.”  
“Did I?”  
“Yes,” says Pete, with too much certainty. “You should have left the account after that car crash. I mean, really.”

They continue like this for a while, talking, and drinking, with Ken afraid to go home and face Cynthia’s sympathy, and Pete seeming unaware of the late hour. Ken would worry about Pete, if he had the time to think about it. The man never seems to leave the office – he isn’t working, exactly, just hanging around. Hoping to be seen around, Ken supposes. Maybe it’s a good strategy for promotion. Maybe Ken should be more concerned for his job. Maybe Pete’s just avoiding Trudy.

The bar fills up, and then empties out, and finally Ken gets up to go, feeling drunk enough to try to convince Cynthia that he should stay at his job, that they need the money, and that writing isn’t for him, not now, not just yet.  
Then he feels something cold on his wrist and is confused. Pete has grabbed him, is looking up at him, with an open expression on his face.  
“Wait,” he says. “I want to see it.”  
Ken stops, insulted, and thinks about Cynthia, sees her face contorted with worry, imagines her arms around him, comforting, concerned.  
“You voyeuristic bastard,” says Ken. “Come on.”  
He takes Pete’s arm and they stagger into the bathroom. It is empty, thank God, and Ken leans back against the bathroom counter, and Pete moves forwards, and slowly, gently, lifts the eyepatch, staring intently as he does so. Ken is nowhere near used to his impaired vision – he is not even close to being bewildered by it, he is still shocked, disorientated. This – mixed with the drink – leads him to flinch, alarmed, when Pete moves to close, when he falls out of Ken’s field of vision.  
“I’m sorry,” says Pete, and there is a tenderness to his voice that Ken is also unused to. “Does it hurt?”  
Ken shakes his head, lying.  
“Can I-” Pete leans back and raises his hand up. His fingers scrape across the wound, and he strokes it, gently, at first, and then he starts to apply pressure, poking it, running his fingertips along the ridges of damaged skin, taking in the redness, the absurdity of it – having a red hole where an eye used to be.  
“I’m sorry,” Pete says again, and then leans in to kiss him, to kiss his broken eye. Ken lets him, for a little bit, maybe he even kisses back. Pete’s lips are warm, and soft. His touches are gentle. Ken melts into him, offers up his lips, his body, and the bullet wound that was once his eye. He moans, and Pete grabs him, and they kiss, and kiss until the bathroom door crashes open and they are forced – by shame – to pull apart.

A week later a doctor informs Ken that his eye has become infected. Cynthia is distraught, she blames herself. Ken insists – even with the memory of Pete’s tongue in his eye, that new, unfounded intimacy, that he has never had with anyone, not even with Cynthia, he insists - that he has no idea how it happened, no idea at all. 

iii.  
Later – years later – when Pete’s life has fallen apart, and Wichita collapsed in on itself, and Trudy is sick of him, for good this time, and Tammy, old enough to see him for the wreck that he is, has told him – finally, expectedly – that she wants him out of her life, Pete wakes up in a car crash, with snowfall cementing him into the vehicle, and a pool of blood gathering around him. He never did learn how to drive stick. When he is rescued – somehow, against all probability, through some bizarre grace of God – he is confused, lost, and finds himself unrecognisable. He is cripplingly lonely. He waits until he is well enough to walk, and then does so – he walks right out of the hospital. He finds himself a motel room, and watches TV until he is sick of it, flicks between the advertisements until he sees one that could only be Don Draper’s, and then makes himself throw up.

He sits at the little desk in the corner of the motel room. From the corner of his eye, he can see his reflection in the mirror – it is uncanny, he’s so bashed up that he can hardly recognise himself. Pete blinks, twice, and braces himself against the desk. He rings up a number he hopes he is remembering correctly.  
“Hey, Ken,” he says. “Ken Cosgrove. It’s me, Pete. I’m heading your way – I was wondering if you’d like to catch up


End file.
